General Networking/Lan/Wan/dual band modem router

Questionhi there . I upgraded my old modem router ( D Link 2750U - N300 ) to a Cisco Linksys X3500 ( Dual Band N750 ) . I did it because I need to connect more than 7 devices ( AllinOne , pc , laptop , tablet , cell phone , TV , ... ) to one ADSL line and I thought a dual band router , could be better . but it's not ! I don't see any improvement at all ! I know , it's depending on The ISP connection and overall speed of the service , but I wanna know how these modem routers manage simultaneous connection with several devices , using 2 bands ( 2.4 & 5 ) . should I designate a specific band to each device , or the router does it automatically ? ( all my devices support wireless N ) . how can I really benefit of dual band router ? what shall I do ?

AnswerHi Eric,

First - if your "bottleneck" is your Internet link - not your wireless home network, then often nothing will help. No matter how fast the wireless network is, it is often limited by the Internet link. If that is true for you, then it wouldn't matter how fast you make your wireless network - your Internet connection is what it is.

That aside, you could look at your router settings. By default, it might use 2.4 instead of 5 GHz. For the most part the real advantage of 5 GHz is often not speed per se but that it uses frequency ranges (channels) that don't overlap with 2.4 - which can be a real issue in more densely populated and urban areas. LOTS of stuff uses 2.4 - even microwave ovens. But 2.4 only has 3 non-overlapping channels. 5 GHz has over 20 non-overlapping channels.

Something that you might look into, in your router settings, is to see if you can configure your Cisco router to manually use 5 GHz instead of 2.4. By default, it may well just be using 802.11 N and running at 2.4. In theory, it'll still support 2.4 for devices that don't handle 5. Generally, it's best to explicitly tell the router "only use 5", and see afterwards if everything else can handle it. Lots of gear won't necessarily be all that smart about using the "fastest" - and can fall back to "most compatible" instead.